


Life After the Fire (The "Like Fields of Poppies" Remix)

by Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Remixed, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth
Summary: Every first touch leaves a mark, a colour on another's skin, marks of  love or hate, family or anger, friendship or lust.  Neil is the boy without colours on his skin, with scars instead of marks.  All he wants is to leave his mark, to be real, to be remembered.





	Life After the Fire (The "Like Fields of Poppies" Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A_Nobelmonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Nobelmonster/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Like fields of poppies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5945086) by [A_Nobelmonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Nobelmonster/pseuds/A_Nobelmonster). 



Nathaniel Wesninski is three years old. His favourite foods are cheese strings and apple juice. His favourite show is Mr Dressup. His favourite place to be is curled up in the corner under his bed. The word he says the most is “why.” Nathaniel has one mark on his skin, a white patch of scar tissue marring the side of his foot. He doesn’t remember receiving the hurt, but his mother’s bare hands don't colour his skin. She has no mark from him either, but sometimes when she is distracted, she rubs an old one on the side of her finger. He wonders if he left that mark. He doesn’t dare ask why she wouldn't keep it, not anymore.

Sometimes when he’s sad, he’ll pull out the yellow marker he stole from the dentist’s office and draw on his skin. He is careful to do it in a place where his clothes will cover it and he always washes it off before bathtime. But it makes him feel better to pretend that his mother loves him.

She finds the marker eventually. She screams at him as she breaks it, yellow ink staining her hands. It goes in the trash. He never sees it again. But sometimes bruises turn yellow before they fade away and he pretends again.

Nathaniel Wesninski is seven years old. His favourite food is anything at Mcdonald’s. He doesn’t watch tv any more. His favourite place is still that corner under the bed. He doesn’t speak much at all. He has four marks on his skin. The scar on his foot has faded. It doesn’t look so large now that his foot has grown. There is a square patch just below his ribs from Lola. He watches in fascination as his skin turned purple, like a drop of food colouring in water. He doesn’t watch as she carves it out of him, crosshatching lines with her blade until he can’t see the original mark. Lola calls Romero in to touch him, give him a matching mark on the other side so she can do it all again.

The fourth mark is from his father. Nathaniel says something strange to a parent in the park and that parent calls the police. Nothing comes of it but after the policeman leaves, Nathan grabs his arm with bruising force and throws him to the ground. Neil stares at the inky black mass spreading over his skin, numb with the thought that this is the very first time his father touches him with ungloved hand. That mark too, does not last. His father snatches the hot iron from his mother where she is pressing Nathan’s dress shirts and he presses it to Neil's shoulder, obliterating the evidence of his hatred in burnt and swollen flesh while Nathaniel screams.

Nathaniel doesn’t bother to pretend anymore. He will never have a yellow mark. 

Nathaniel Wesninski is ten years old. He doesn’t have a favourite food. His favourite thing to watch on tv is Exy. Exy! Exy! Exy! His favourite place is the court, any court. He has countless scars but only five were once soulmarks, a scar on his foot, two patches on his ribs, the hot iron scar on his shoulder and now encircling his forearm.

Nathaniel jumps at every chance to play Exy and when he is given the chance to play with the two most talked about up-and-comers, he doesn’t dream of refusing. Riko is cold and precise on the court. He doesn’t speak unless it’s to bark orders at his team. Kevin is strong and fast, unpredictable as lightning. He grins fiercely every time he approaches the goal and Nathaniel feels the same wild joy as an echo ricocheting through his body. Riko doesn’t touch him, just strolls off the court without a backward glance. Kevin comes toward him, hand outstretched.

“Good game, Nathaniel,” he says. They clasp each other’s forearms and when they release, Nathaniel sees the most beautiful blue handprint wrapped around his arm. It’s mirrored on Kevin’s. They grin like idiots. Nathaniel’s cheeks hurt. Something warm flutters in his chest.

His mother pours boiling water over the mark when they get home. Nathaniel passes out from the pain and wakes up in the car. He asks his mother where they’re going but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even look at him. He hugs his arm close to his chest and closes his eyes, pretending he can still see that beautiful blue.

Alex Daniels is fourteen years old. His favourite food is anything hot and fresh and not from a gas station. He still watches nothing but Exy even though he isn’t allowed to play. He’s learning German and it helps somehow to have something to throw his energy into like this. The scars are not accumulating so quickly. His mother only leaves bruises but there are six now that cover soul marks.

Alex isn’t sure what he wants if he’s being honest with himself, but normal boys his age want to kiss girls and Alex thinks he wants to be a normal boy. Samantha from his English class doodles his name on her notebook and giggles when he catches her looking. She invites him to meet with her behind the school and he follows, excitement and nerves warring in the pit of his stomach. She puts her hand on his shoulder when she kisses him and her thumb lightly brushes his collarbone where the neck of his shirt dips. He isn’t sure how much he really enjoyed it but he sees the light blue on her jawline from his own thumb and when he looks in the mirror later, there is a line of pink where she touched him.

The soul mark was so faint that Alex didn’t bother to cover it up. His mother saw it anyway. He was used to the screaming and the punching, the stiffness and soreness from bruises old and new, but he never got used to the feeling of the knife in his skin, tearing out yet another personal connection.

Stefan Jennings is sixteen years old. He eats food to live. He doesn’t watch Exy because it reminds him of a time he still wanted things, of a time he still had hope that things would get better. He has new scars, including a bullet wound from when his father’s people got too close. And now he has the memory of his mother’s fingers digging around in his flesh. He still has six scarred soul marks. He wonders if the colour ever bleeds through, if a feeling could be strong enough to still stain his skin through the damage. For most, he doesn’t care one way or the other, but sometimes he strokes the smooth white patch on his ankle and he wonders.

There is a boy in his class, Jason. Stefan watches him sometimes in class. He isn’t particularly good looking or smart. Stefan has seen a hundred guys like him in every town. But he wears a lot of sleeveless shirts and every inch of his arms and forearms is covered in a rainbow of colours, mostly blues and pinks but the few yellows are rich and vibrant, so bright Stefan swears he could see them with his eyes closed. And he has one red one on his cheek. His girlfriend kisses it every morning when they meet at school. He wonders if this is what a crush feels like but when it comes right down to it, he wants Jason’s life and not anything else about him. 

In the end, Mary gets skittish and they move on. Stefan never touches Jason. Jason never learns his name.

Neil is seventeen years old. He can’t eat meat because the smell reminds him of the last time he saw his mother. He left her burning on the beach. He still doesn’t know if she loved him. He doesn’t know if he loved her either. He doesn’t watch tv. He doesn’t have one in the house he’s squatting in. He plays Exy, clinging to it in absence of all other stability. He only means to do it for a year. It’s his farewell tour. He doesn’t know yet how it will end, if he will fade into obscurity, or if they’ll finally catch him and kill him. When things finally change, he doesn’t see it coming.

Neil is seventeen years old when he is recruited. He knows it can’t last. He was already pushing it playing Exy in his final year of high school. To go on to College Exy with press and publicity, it was madness to even suggest it. But an Exy racquet steals his breath and the face he sees makes his decision for him. He gets a flash of memory, feeling himself stagger in the crowd, too much booze, too much blood loss. He catches himself on the arm of a stranger, one finger slipping between the sleeve and the black armband to graze the skin beneath, one wild look at honey hazel eyes and white blond hair, and then they’ve lost each other in the crowd. There is no recognition in the other boy’s eyes. Neil’s eyes flicker to his arms wondering if he left a mark, he must have. What colour?

The boy, Andrew, has no visible marks, but his hands are gloved, black armbands cover the space between glove and shirt sleeve. Neil thinks maybe he catches a glimpse of blue, peeping above his high collar. He knows he has to go to Palmetto. He has to know.

Andrew watches him and Neil watches him right back. He doesn’t get his answer until months later and a panic attack in the locker room. Andrew grips the back of his neck with one bare hand and it has two immediate effects. First it grounds him in the here and now and second, he feels that tingle he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager. It takes all that is in him not to run to a mirror to check. He doesn’t have long to wait because Andrew breaks first and leaves him alone in the room.

It’s red, beautiful, rich red. There is no mistaking the intent. Someday, Andrew will love Neil. Neil doesn’t know if he is capable of loving Andrew back. He still hasn’t seen Andrew’s mark. He is already planning how to get rid of the red when he realizes that he doesn’t have to. He’s chosen to be real this year. He’s given Kevin his game and Andrew his back. This person, this real person, can leave a history on his skin, at least until it’s time to disappear again.

Evermore happens. The Ravens break him down on the court, uniforms minimizing the chance of skin to skin contact. Tetsuji beats him with a cane, keeping his distance. Riko uses knives on bare skin. Jean leaves his handprint in navy blue on Neil’s heart and Neil leaves the same colour across the back of his hand. It’s the only time anyone truly touches him in that long two weeks before the new year.

It’s not until he is back and recovering that he sees the four in black on his cheek, roughly and calculatingly sketched there by Riko as his last parting gift. He panics because this is a mark worth carving out of his skin. When he comes back to himself, he is in Wymack’s arms with a band of incandescent yellow around the wrist of his knife hand and then he’s crying for a whole new reason because as unlikely as red had seemed, he had given up on ever seeing yellow on his skin.

It changes something in him. He knows he is going to die at the end of this year. He can’t hide anymore. So now it’s time to prove that Neil Josten, Exy striker for the Palmetto State Foxes, was real, he lived and he made his mark.

He leaves a blue streak on Nicky’s bicep. Nicky turns part of his scalp blue. Neil grins every time he runs his fingers through his hair and sees glimpses of blue through the auburn. He and Matt soon have matching knuckle marks in teal from their first fist bump. Dan dumps her sore feet in his lap, leaving another vibrant blue mark where her heels rested in his lap. He doesn’t hesitate to wrap one hand around her ankle, the shades of blue matching each other exactly. He and Renee have matching green pinky fingers because she believes in the sanctity of the pinky promise and Neil is trying his best to trust her. The shade of their soul marks go a long way toward convincing him that she is who she seems to be. Allison’s is green too, a deep forest green from where they linked arms the first time they went shopping together. 

Aaron’s is strange. They almost collide on the court and simultaneously reach out to steady each other. They’re both confused by the pale yellow stains that result.

The blue on Kevin’s forearm is still there. Neil wishes his own had survived. It’s the one scar he regrets the most.

His favourite thing, more than the kisses, more than every other bit that Andrew gives him, is the small red spot on Andrew’s elbow, confirmation that he wasn’t broken, that he could give love as well as receive.

He focused on that, not on the fact that the year was drawing to an end, not on the numbers slowly counting down in his phone. But he wasn’t ready to go when they arrived, Romero, Jackson...and Lola.

He’s so afraid but he has to protect them, his friends, his family, everyone he loves. And so he follows them even as the riot erupts around him. He doesn’t look back in case he draws one of them in. 

The car ride is a nightmare. Lola uses her knives and the car’s cigarette lighter to obliterate as many of his soul marks as she can see, except for Andrew’s.

“I’ll leave this one for Nathan,” she whispers in his ear.

Neil doesn’t breathe until the gunshots come. His father slides down the wall, leaving a streak in the blood and brain matter spattered on the wall. Even then, he doesn’t feel settled until he’s kneeling in front of Andrew, with Andrew’s hand wrapped around his still intact soulmark. Neil is home again.

Neil Josten is twenty years old. His favourite food is strawberries and cream. His favourite tv show is still Exy! Exy! Exy! His favourite place to sleep is face to face with Andrew and his favourite name to say, to whisper, to shout, is “Andrew.” He has scars, one on his foot to cover whatever colour his mother left behind, two to cover Lola and Romero’s cruel games, a hot iron burn to hide his father’s hatred, and countless others. But the more time he spends with the people he loves, the more their marks colour the once white skin of his scars. The red handprint that Andrew left grows brighter and deeper with every touch. Anyone who looks at him can see that he is loved, that he is wanted, that he is real.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out A_nobelmonster's fic for an explanation of the colours and to see my inspiration. I made the decision that the one initiating the touch is the one who leaves the mark, which is why not all the soul marks correspond with each other and why Neil and Andrew's marks could happen so far apart.


End file.
